Constancy
by Waffles
Summary: There is no ZIM. There never has been. (Third and final chapter now up!)
1. Default Chapter

FOREWORD  
  
Have you ever had those nights when you just lie awake and wish that you were crazy? I   
sure have. Wouldn't life be nice if all the friends and demons in your head were real? Wouldn't   
it be fun? I'm sure we've all wished for something more at some point in our time. Adventure.   
Emotion. Meaning. Sometimes I think that the crazy ones have got the right idea.   
  
  
Installment 1  
  
"If you don't let go of your fantasies, Dib, then how can we help you?"  
A rasping moan slunk through the air, swirling a wet redness through the stagnant   
warmth of the beige office. It hung like milk in water, dissolving softly like a red scarf of silk. It   
rippled with the tiny explosions of an unknown current, the sporadic springs that leap from the   
spaces between river stones. Quickly, it was no longer a scarf but so many ethereal crowns, the   
fine haloes of the urbane goddesses circling him in a diaphanous ring. Did they have pity for   
him?  
"Talk to me, Dib, I need to know what you're feeling."  
"Fuck you."  
"I don't think it's hostility towards me you're feeling, Dib, I understand why you're   
upset. It's okay to be upset, Dib, but-"  
"Fuck," the boy allowed the word to hang in the air a moment for effect, "you."  
"Dib, I believe that we should get back to the point. Your father brought you to me   
because he cares about you-"  
"Then where is he?" he asked.  
"Excuse me?"  
"Where is my father, who loves me so much?" Dib's fingers fluttered coldly on an arm   
of smooth cherry. The high, small window breathed hotly past his face, stepping through the   
black, back lit vertical blinds to become the warm barrier between them. He pinned a narrowed   
gaze through the yellow sunlight encased in dust, through the framed glass of a patronizing stare   
cast at him through unfocused orbs. One could be dumb when they wished to be.  
"Do you want to talk about your father, Dib?" asked the level, calming voice, with a   
slight, false chirp of non-aggression.  
"No," he scoffed. The sound rolled from his throat and caught in his teeth.  
The sunlight sighed sympathetically and drew another breath of the spare and intentional   
office through the teeth of its dark blinds.  
"What would you like to talk about, Dib?" It was still asked in the same tone of voice,   
high and tight.  
The boy huffed with a breath of laughter. "Nothing. You're wasting my time. I'm   
wasting yours. I've got better things to do than sit here and be interrogated by-" The breath of   
the light strewn through the window caught in its throat and Dib's eyes darted to see its gasping.   
The yellow sunlight wheezed and shuddered, wracking the sun with an asthmatic tremor. It   
extended its hand in a frail, fatalistic gesture and its granules fell quickly to the floor. "Shit!"  
  
Dib swung his small frame onto the back of the chair with a whirl of his trench coat and   
sprung off like a lizard, landing in a roll which ended at the door. He caught his feet and with a   
quick twist emerged into the slated streets. The shadows were prosthetics to the gray buildings,   
like smooth, blue plastic to replace missing bones. What light that shone down upon their   
hollow faces and the gleam of their square, black eyes was thin and sad.  
"What did ZIM do to the sun?" His irises thinned to points and his jaw hung boneless.  
"Oh, I didn't do anything to the sun, Dib," called a high, smug voice, "I just moved the   
Earth!"   
Dib whirled to face a small green alien with a black toupee, laughing with throaty,   
hysterical menace. He stood as tall as Dib, taking the appearance of a green child with no ears   
and lacking a digit in his long, black gloves. Pleased with himself, apparently, he set his fists at   
his waist and waited for the inevitable reaction from the human boy. "ZIM," said Dib with   
expectant spite, not surprised by the presence of the alien at all but never less occupied by it, "so   
what's your evil plan this time? What do you plan to accomplish by freezing us to death?"  
The alien narrowed one purple eye, the other growing wide. "You die," he responded to   
the obvious question. He shook his head and waved his hand in dismissing exasperation. "You   
humans... especially you Dib, you're stupidity makes me almost feel sorry for you. I'm sure   
you'll find it a beneficial experience being a slave to an obviously superior race. Don't worry,"   
He patted Dib on the head and smirked. "you can be my pet."   
Dib's teeth pierced easily through the patronizing hand set upon him.  
  
"Oh! Good God! Security! Security, help!"  
There was a bewildered murmur from the rooms down the hall, secretaries and waiting   
patients struck dumb by the sudden outburst. The were whispers of "Oh, my God! Oh, my   
God!" and the creak of bodies being lifted from chairs as they scurried to peer down the hall with   
eager caution. Behind a pane of reinforced glass, a secretary punched the emergency call button   
on the phone, the expression in her still, gray eyes as though she were looking at something left   
dead on the road.   
Security skidded into place at the door of the doctor's office with a squeak of polished   
uniform shoes. With a few misplaced kicks the door flapped inward, fanning before the vision of   
a boy face-down in spit and blood on top of the desk and a psychiatrist, crouched and thoughtful,   
head lain against it from her sitting place on the floor.   
"What the Hell?" There was the soft "phlink" of rough hands rushed hastily to guns.   
"Uh-oh fuck!" The plump, middle-aged men swept in with swift and efficient violence,   
wrenching the boy's head from the desk to toss his skinny frame to the floor. It was like they   
tried to break a green switch, a foot in his back and the other grinding his unconscious face into   
the hardwood, fingers clutched in his hair, the other hand scuffling with the handcuffs. Dib was   
limp and surely would have found more injury had he not been.  
With her good hand, Doctor Morado palmed the frame of her glasses and released them   
upon the bridge of her nose. Without taking her eyes from the boy on the floor, her hand drifted   
with stiffness but a lack of hurry to find the bloody paper weight, a contemporary piece of glass,   
two fluid-like figures set apart by distance running together at the base. "Hm." The doctor was   
surprised that, in spite of its impact with Dib's head, it was intact.  
After Dib had been trussed up and dragged down the hall, a security guard came back to   
give the doctor a furtive peer. He snaked his head around the doorframe, thick hands set next to   
a black belt looped through leather pockets and a gun holster. He was bold with adrenaline, yet   
suddenly awkward with the notion of what he should do with the "victim". Maybe, had she been   
crying, he could have tossed a woolen blanket around her shoulder like they do on television, he   
could have said, "It's okay. We got 'em ma'am." and would have been very pleased with   
himself for it. However, the woman simply stood like psychiatrists stand, back straight, hands   
crossed lightly in front of her, one in the claw of a spasm and laying jagged and wet upon the   
other white and calm. She was on the drawing line of shadow cast from the dark yellow light of   
her tiny window, eyes draped down upon the sticky paperweight sitting in the mess.  
"Ma'am?"  
The doctor looked up with the vapor of bewilderment as though she had been caught in   
the middle of a book. "Yes, Steve?" She made a point to call everyone by name.  
The man's thick lips pinched into a deep frown, defining the cleft in his chin. "Are you   
all right ma'am? Your hand-"  
"Oh." She flicked her bloody arm as though dismissing and fly and with a tone almost   
like embarrassment said, "Yes. Thank you. I'll just take myself down to the ER." In spite of   
this, her eyes rolled back down to the desk and she stood without the obvious intent of moving.  
"Ma'am?" the guard called nervously.  
"Yes, Steve."  
"What happened?"  
"Hm." The doctor frowned. She tipped her head towards man in the doorway and   
shifting her weight over the dishevelment of the desk, placed a finger upon the head of each   
abstract figure. She slid a white gaze into the hall, then, eyes suddenly rippling, leaned towards   
him with the slow exaggeration of conspiracy. "ZIM," she whispered, "ZIM's back. Dib is   
having the Invader fits again."  
  
"Class," announced the old woman, a lank spider with glasses, "normally I would ask   
you if you wanted to use your last Crazy Card, but considering the rabid little worm child bit   
me," her eyes narrowed, voice grating, "I'm making the decision for you." From her bony hand,   
the blinking collar was clapped around Dib's neck and then Ms. Bitters tossed him into the floor.   
"Wait!" he pleaded, "But, ZIM!" The skool children only gawked with vague annoyance and   
slight alarm. Dib's small breath of protest was yanked into a gurgle as his collar was plucked up   
by large hands.  
The whitecoat chuckled, "So, you're at it again, little boy!"  
"Him again? The big head kid," said the other, "I thought they said they were going to   
cut that big head open and get in there and fix it?"  
"What?" Dib shrilled.  
"Nuthin'"  
"You- you're talking about cutting my head open!"  
The whitecoats blinked in tandem and answered simply, "Yes."   
The hideous floor swung beneath Dib as they toted him towards the rough orifice in the   
wall which they had burst through. "My head's not even big!" The boy fought to crane up his   
head to implore to the numb, disinterest of his skoolmates. "It's not big!" He grabbed another   
boy by the ears. "You! Do you think my head's big?" The seized boy shied away from the hiss   
of his breath and Dib's bared teeth.   
"Whoa. Hey, hey now! Let's not kill anyone before we get you tied up, eh?" The   
whitecoats stepped into the murk of the empty hall.  
As he slipped through the ragged threshold of the classroom, Dib was fixed with the sated   
amusement in ZIM's crisp eyes. The alien slowly leaned in towards him, blotting the sick   
fluorescent light from the human boy's face. ZIM observed him mildly for a moment, met his   
gaze with a temperate constancy and slowly smiled. "'See ya', Dib."  
  
  
POSTSCRIPT  
  
I really didn't want to make this thing a multiple part deal, but I can't force my poor I-wish-I-  
were-crazy head to write any more right now. So, please stay tuned to what will probably be the   
second and last installment. Thanks.  
  
Waffles 


	2. Installment 2

FOREWORD  
  
It seems that there will have to be an Installment 3 to all of this. 0_0   
  
Installment 2  
  
The young man's eyes laid dubiously upon the little yellow slip of paper. "So what is   
this?" he asked with smooth disconcern, rapping the frame of his glasses with the crooked hand   
propping up his head.  
"A prescription for some stronger medication, Dib. I have the feeling that these," The   
somber man shook a toffee colored bottle by the child safety cap. "are not working for you."  
An oozing, insincere smile bled out from Dib's lips, spreading thinly and erratically over   
his pale face. "And what makes you say that, doctor?"  
The psychologist set his heavy, unemotional stare upon Dib like a physical weight, thin,   
black eyes narrowed with calculation. He set the bottle back upon the table with an emphasis   
that was slow and chilling. Dib's hand dropped involuntarily back into his lap. The rivulets of   
his razor smile drained back into his throat and all the cunning and aggression of the gesture was   
drunken up by his soft brown eyes. He met the doctor's gaze like glass, heartless and reflective   
of the doctor's own heartlessness. Dib waited.  
"Dib," said the doctor with a metallic resonance, "I'm not here to put up with your   
games."  
There was an audible pause suspended in the air. An abrupt and inappropriate squawk   
escaped from the young man's lungs. His long and black draped frame shook with a soft and   
breathy mirth. Dib allowed his spine to swing back over the diminutive chair, fist pressed   
against his gleeful grin. "Oh!" he choked, "Oh, fuckin' God!" His voice was hoarse with   
laughter. He stood up from the flimsy chair, looming tall and straight before the old doctor, and   
bending down to him, hands clapped over his thighs, exclaimed, "You are! This is exactly what   
you're here for, what I'm here for, for you to put up with my games!" He chuckled. "That's   
what my rich dad pays you for!"  
"Your rich dad pays us to keep you out of an asylum, Dib." The doctor eased back into   
his chair, steepling his fingers. "It's a pretty simple process to send you back, Dib."  
"Well," he replied softly, "I suppose that's a threat?"   
"A promise Dib, consider it a promise from me to you."  
"Aww. Thanks! That's so sweet of you!" His was abruptly casual, slicked down with   
sarcasm, he leaned in and pressed his palms flat upon the desktop with a wry smirk.   
"Dib," the doctor demanded hollowly.  
"Doctor Akai."  
"Don't think I'm shitting around here, Dib."  
"Oh?" He blinked twice. "You're not? Well then," He propped his chin upon the edge   
of the desk and peered up at the man intently. "okay."  
Akai moved slowly, fingertips falling away from each other and slipping into still   
gestures in the air. "Dib," he said calmly, "there's something I'd like to show you." As though   
he would move with stealth, he tweaked drawer of his desk adrift and reached into it for   
something, cupping it under his palm. He caught Dib's shift to look but raised a dry and halting   
finger, extending the thing behind his back. "Wait."   
Dib slumped with a mounting reluctance, but was suddenly taken by the twitch   
demanding he be on his feet. He unhinged himself tensely from the furniture, but before he   
could creep away, the tiny red vial was presented before Dib's eyes.  
"Do you remember this, Dib?"  
  
"OHHHHGODFUCKINSHIIIIIIIIT!!!"  
"I take it from your reaction that you're experiencing some discomfort," she said   
medicinally, jotting notations on the clipboard from behind mirrored glass, "Your extremities,   
your fingers, toes, can you feel them?"  
"Oh-God... OhGEEZ-OHFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK-" The exclamation ended in   
the lapping strangle of Dib's spine thrashing at his lower brain.   
"People! Where's the brace?"  
Red pooled and gelled around the corners of his vision, a cherry sheen under the round   
white lights. It was like one red bubble, a squeezed balloon of the verge of popping, its surface   
spinning with anxious tension. Dib's eyes filmed and swelled, lids taped back by the lashes, his   
arms lashed to deny his compulsion to rip them out. The red seeped into his skull like a stain,   
breathing its particles slowly into his fibers, permeating like an odor what part of him that he had   
considered his mind. It plucked quickly from the garden alcoves whatever is found unattractive,   
the weeds rooted impossibly between the cracks in the sidewalk, the grass in corners too obscure   
and too inconvenient to step on.   
"It's likely you'll be experiencing some memory loss at this point." There was the lapse   
in which she took her notes. "It's nothing to worry about, really. It's not likely you'll lose any   
thing of purpose which you can't be filled in on later."   
Moisture condensated in the casing of his skull. It congregated pacedly into the larger   
droplets, clinging in the shape of mushrooms caps, settling the red sediment within their valleys.   
He swallowed his breath, bating under a gray cap misted with the jewels of vision. He held their   
audience, they watching him expectantly, he waiting, expectant himself, a silent, querulous   
exchange, looks cast about from eye to eye in a sea of so many, glancing uncertainly among   
themselves. But they, gathered as they were like a sea had scant halting ripples before the   
budding of unity. And with the clash of a red-wrought wave, minds decided, they descended   
upon him.  
  
"Yes. I remember."  
  
"Fools! I am ZIM! ZIM of the Irken Elite! Mighty Invader of-"  
"Just shut up ZIM," Dib muttered, "No one cares. They know who you are. They know   
who I am, and we're here just for that reason." He sat at one corner of a dark, domed room,   
laced densely with the sinew of thick purple conduits. It was one of the more neglected cells,   
exposing so much of its mechanism, but the would-be Invader and the alien who pursued him did   
not fall high on the agenda of Irken concerns. The wiring strung high into the shadows like   
tethers sinking into water. Something amidst the web hummed concisely as it skittered into a   
position amidst the metal ducts where it could watch them more closely. Dib's head lay on his   
knees, staring blankly ahead of him.   
There was a trembling gloss in the alien's red eyes, antennae shivering against his head.   
He leapt across the confinement, seizing the human by the throat. "You're no friend of mine,   
Dib!" the aliens snarled, "No friend of mine!" His mouthed contorted with repulsion, his finger   
points digging into the taut flesh of the human neck.  
The boy's teeth grated with disgust, pressing a bladed stare through the smooth red orbs   
of the creature gripped panickedly at his throat. He drew a harsh, bating breath an hissed to him   
quietly, "You're no friend of mine either ZIM. But, it seems like we're just stuck together." He   
planted a foot in ZIM's organs, wrenching the fingers from his neck. "This was your stupid idea,   
ZIM. 'I moved the Earth!' Yeah, you moved it straight into your own planet's orbit! No   
wonder they love you here, ZIM! Here you are dragging the wildlife home with you!"   
The alien's eyes thinned to bright stained shards. His arms trembled with rage, twisting   
his shoulders into a motion like laughter. "You waste of human surplus!" he rasped, lips hooked   
down into a sneer, "You, tainted, backward animal of your meek and pathetic planet, think you   
can understand the workings of a mighty and profound society like that of Irk? You don't even   
comprehend-"  
"Daddy."  
"Eh?" ZIM's tirade unraveled, winding into dumb shock. "Who-? I- What's this?"  
"Daddeee," the tiny Irken trilled, calling through the invisible barrier sheeted over the   
narrow white haze of the exit. She peered inside with the pronounced glare of an immature   
concentration, the young alien's wide pink eyes lit with purpose and frustration. She chewed her   
lip and hopped twice, flapping her arms and pouting into the cage imperatively.  
Dib stuttered, flailing for words. The concentration of his incredulity was torn between   
his fellow in confinement and the little alien girl. He choked out, "ZIM? This is you kid?"  
"Er-" The alien stalked around the cage with the fervor of helpless confusion. "No.   
No!" He held out his palms as though to push the concept away, squinting in distress. "This   
Irken infant is no child of ZIM!" Suddenly struck by a thought, the alien frowned. "Hey... it   
doesn't even work like that! I know not of what you speak-"  
"Daaaddeee!" The child had come to the end of the short span that was her patience.   
Small hands curled in fists, she swept simply through the barrier without the touch of resistance.   
She took a moment to stare disapprovingly at both, the Irken Invader and the human boy   
crouched against the floor in equal states of alarm, then snatched Dib's wrist in both hands.   
"Daddy, c'mon!"  
  
POSTSCRIPT  
  
Hi. Still reading? Confused? That third part will be out sometime. *twitches*  
  
Waffles 


	3. Installment 3

FOREWORD  
  
This is the end. I almost feel guilty about the way I've treated Dib. Poor Dib. You can go be   
happy in someone else's fic now! After this, you are free, my poor crazy-monkey!  
  
Installment 3  
  
Someone in the line at the pharmacy shook a hand in front of Dib's face. "Gawd! Wake   
up, ya psycho, you're holding up the line!"  
The little girl dangled from Dib's arm, wide, round glasses crooked on her nose.   
"Daddeee!" she complained. "They want you to move!" The child pulled his arm as though she   
would drag him to the counter, leaning her tiny frame into the motion, the impractical soles of   
her dress shoes slipping on the linoleum floor. "C'mon, it's your turn now!"  
"Sir?" The young man behind the desk frowned nervously, throwing panicked glances at   
the other employees stationed like pillars amongst the rows of bottles. "Are you okay?" His   
eyes had the wide and bubbled look of a fish. He grimaced, eyebrows raised with surprise and   
dread. "Do you want me to call someone? Is there... um..."  
"C'mawn!" Dib's daughter jumped up and down, pigtails snapping. "I wanna go now!   
It's spooky in here!" she chirped, throwing spooked rabbit-like glances at the dentures and enima   
bags. "Spooky!" Her the flit of her panicked gaze was suddenly snagged by a brightly colored   
cardboard box set on a low shelf for better child viewing. Her dark pupils narrowed in with   
concentration, lip slowly protruding. She blinked anxiously, and, finding a sweet and mild   
expression for her father, asked, "Buy me those?"  
The man stared down mundanely. "Buy you which, Rikki?" The child swung both arms   
emphatically to the box on the shelf. "Adhesive medical strips?" She nodded with glossy-eyed   
gravity. Dib smirked and shook his head slightly, ready to state the obvious and obviously not   
important to a child. "But you don't even have a boo-boo!"  
Her jaw dropped for exactly that reason. "So?"  
Dib chuckled softly, tossing a hand in dismissal. "Go ahead and get them."  
"Woo!" The little girl swam through the impatient crowd like a little crustacean, them   
angry but struck too dumb by the display to do anything. There was the sound of some papery   
impact as she stuck a claw into the mire to fish out her prey and sent the spared objects fleeing   
into a spill on the floor. She immerged again with her prize clutched high and slapped it   
gleefully upon the counter.  
The young man from behind the counter snatched the prescription away from Dib's loose   
fingertips with nervous speed and stumbled to the back. The motley cavalcade of customers   
fidgeted like vultures, cocking ebon plumes at the bizarre creature lain before them. A bolder   
one might have given the meat a peck but would have been startled to realize that the quarry was   
alive. As it was they mumbled gutturally to themselves, the crooked beaks in their naked heads   
clacking with agitation.  
Dib exchanged a loosely folded pamphlet of bills for a little brown bottle and shot a   
quick, feral glance at the scene of predation as he turned to go.  
  
The three kept an awkward dash along the wall, gusting around the wires and conduits.   
"Geez, is that a camera?" Dib stumbled over backward betwen two pipes, hastily   
dragging himself from the view of the glassy glint caught in the corner of his eye. The pink-eyed   
Irken peered at him curiously, stopped a pace ahead. She tossed a glance back to ZIM and   
pointed with blank silence at Dib, belly to the floor and eyes wrenching warily in all directions.  
ZIM frowned with annoyance. "Yes, I know that, Irken child," he quipped. "Of course   
its a "camera" Dib! Now, come on, they're probably coming for us right now!"   
Dib's eyes flared with suspicion. "Hey... What do you need me for anyway?" He stood   
up, stalking swiftly through the tangle to where ZIM perched impatiently on a coil of metal.   
"Why do you care if I come with you? Huh?"  
"Dib," he hissed, "as much as you disgust me, there isn't much time before both of ours   
home worlds smash each other into little bitty pieces." His voice was empty, ringing with an   
unreasonable lack of fear. "Since it's your filthy planet out there about to crash into mine, I   
figure you might as well help me."  
Dib raised an eyebrow, running his lip between his teeth. "Wait... but... why can't those   
other aliens just fix it? Ya' know the entire rest of the 'empire'?" He wiggled his fingers in   
front of him. "With all their big ships and lasers and stuff? I'm sure they're doing something."  
"Nothing compared to the mighty resourcefulness of ZIM!" the alien supplied.  
"So you're saying that you're the only one who can save the planet?" he asked with the   
dull, accustomed exasperation inevitable in any conversation with ZIM.  
The alien blinked his wide red eyes twice and replied with a subdued certainty, "Yes.   
Yes, I am. They will all thank the mighty ZIM!" He squinted, teeth borne with glee, and   
suddenly popped a finger in the direction of the young Irken. "All of you!"  
The little creature observed him sourly, wide green eyelids heavy with disinterest. "We   
need to go!"  
"Alright, let's go," he agreed and nearly stepped backward into a rush of laser fire. Dib   
and ZIM dove into the thicket of wiring, hissing and sparking under the searing volley. The   
Irkens guards hugged the corner of the hall, red eyes agleam with the reflection of the fuchsia   
blasts, strewing the ill-lit hall with an irradiated quiver. Dib and ZIM cringed behind the low   
conduits, hands clawed over their heads. A choking escaped from Dib's throat, what would have   
been adressed to his companions, but for a strike on the wiring over his head, coughing a shower   
of sparks. He clenched his eyes shut, in a panic to think as the squealing roar richocheted over   
his head.  
The little girl, unmoved, stood her place watching the Irken guards like fish in a bowl,   
eyes to the brim with the liquid clarity of a faint and calm interest. She stood clear amidst the   
contorted shrieks of the purple streams eroding the corded nest into its very thread, unraveling   
the twine of wire, the plates of metal into beards of knarled charcoal, spewed from gasping   
mouths which sparked and glowed. The child was unimpressed, untouched. She watched the   
fish like a cat hiding in a bird's nest.   
Dib shivered, hidden in an eddy of the swamp of fire. From the spare glimpses he could   
steal in the orchid shimmer, he saw the little Irken girl still standing, serene, like a little human   
girl watching the clouds change. "Geez!" He flung out an arm to grab her ankle, fingers taking a   
swift and tremendous sweep of nothing. And as through with the motion he had spilled it upon   
them, a kind veil of blackness decended, sweeping out the shriek of gunfire with a single   
feathery flutter swept quickly down the hall. The air was frozen in its wake, holding a tense   
breath as it got a handle of itself, casting wary glances about the hall, and then rushing out with   
full liquid fury, evaporating on the metallic tinge of seared metal as it struck it, then it was air   
again.  
"C'mon, we need to go," called a soft voice. The little girl stood poised around the   
corner, an Irken gun dangling casually from her hand. She watched them passively with her   
deep pink eyes, standing in an empty black hallway. "C'mon," she said, "we really need to go."  
  
"Do think that- um... ya know- in general are people good or bad?" She fidgeted   
nervously with her little box of adhesive medical strips, clutched like a toy. There was one on   
her knee where there wasn't really any injury at all, patterned with the pointed ovular heads of   
black and blank eyed aliens printed in a bright, crisp green. The girl looked up at her father   
plaintively.  
"Rikki?" The man stopped walking and leaned against the black park fence, watching   
the child with concern. "How old are you?" He saw the girl pull out her fingers but interrupted   
as she started counting with a pinkie. "No, no, never mind, but, Rikki, what makes you ask this   
all of a sudden?"  
The girl frowned shortly in the equivalent of what was a shrug and looked down with a   
feigned interest in the little cardboard box. "Oh, I dunno. I was just thinking, looking at all   
these people. You never really know what any of them is like, I guess. You always say not to   
talk to strangers, but adults do it all the time." She lifted a tendril of dark hair away from her   
glasses. "I dunno. But you really don't like people, right?"  
Dib bit his lip leaning back into the wrought-iron bars. "I don't know whether I'd say   
that, Rikki."  
She watched him blankly. "Well, adults never say it."  
He threw a glance at the child in curiousity. "Well, I don't know whether I believe that,   
either, at least the part about good and bad. I don't really know if any of us are either, or if there   
is even such a thing," He slowly rapped a finger across a long, cool bar. "but I'm not supposed   
to tell you stuff like that."  
"Why?"  
"I really shouldn't even explain that to you."  
"Aww." She sounded only mildly disappointed, like she had been told that her surprise   
would have to wait until later. "Alright." She walked on again, swimming through the leaves   
cast upon the heather sidewalk.   
"Yeah," Dib agreed to the wordless action, "I guess we need to go." He followed the   
child and they loped side by side in silence, her little hand eventually creeping into the cup his.   
The wind waved the leaves in the neat green poplars attractively, snapping the leaves with the   
sounds of flown banners and waved ribbons in the raised arms of the branches tilting giddily   
over their path. The park was green beyond the fence, glowing in sunlight, glowing in shadow,   
and shrinking with the pegs of trees until, at the edge of their vision and exactly their opposite,   
there was another fence and another path. It was very far away.  
It was Sunday and the roads were muted muttering only occasionaly to the pedestrians on   
the walk. Their house lay just down the lane, a respectable old structure, one of the layers of   
many respectable old structures packed in along the same road. It was a nice house, but they   
were all nice houses, plastered in weathered brick and molded concrete. They edged up the steep   
gray steps, gripping thin iron rails and stepped through the splice of a tall wooden door with a   
low brass handle into a yellowed threshold.  
"Rose?" The shadows played across the fine old wood of the deep, trodden floors.   
Rikki skipped through the wide rooms back to the kitchen, shaking her box of adhesive   
medical stripsfrom side to side. "Hey, mom! Look!" Dib kept stiffly in the hallway, watching   
the sun warp through the lead-glass windows and waited coldly for the reply.  
"Adhesive medical strips." It was a statement, concise and uninflected. "Why do we   
need those?" The woman's voice, deep and businesslike grated with a harshness, made milder   
only by disinterest. "And what's that on them? Yeah." She wasn't surprised. "Oh great, we   
really need more of that in the house. Give me those."  
"Hey..."  
"Give them here. I haven't got time for your father's crap. Wherever he's lurking, you   
can tell him that we'll discuss this later. I've got business." There was the grunt of a briefcase   
dragged off the counter, the rap of high heels across the floor and the sticking wood of the back   
door gurgled open and yelped shut with a tremor of glass.   
The little girl peeked through the doorway past the staircase down the hall. "She took my   
adhesive medical strips!" she exclaimed, with more surprise than offense. She made a face.   
"Well, I draw better anyway." She smirked. "I'm gonna get some crayons."  
Dib twisted his head, his hand held to his neck. "That's good, honey."  
"I'll make a picture for you."  
Dib smiled thinly, the black wraith in the shadows of the old brown hall, drinking the   
sunlight into his substance and looming dark and straight in its corner, like a pillar to the familiar   
old structure. He trembled a little when he breathed. "Thank you, sweetie." His eyes were   
closed. He shook his little bottle as he climbed the dark stairs.  
  
"Alright, human, do you have any idea how we're going to stop this?" ZIM dragged an   
icon on the glowing panel traced in shades of crimson. A three dimensional skeleton appeared of   
both their planets, Earth and Irk. The model spun, displaying the distance between the two   
bodies, what looked on the screen like the span of a human's thumb. The blip of its trajectory   
was displayed in spinning rings of green. The computer panned out as they objects collided   
shattering into skeletal shards. Of each orb left, there was about half.  
Dib pressed his fingers to his temples. "Am I supposed to have the answers here? First   
tell me, how did you get us into this?" The little Irken girl wedged herself between the two,   
swinging her head over the monitor with curiousity.  
ZIM narrowed his eyes but slid a finger across the dark panel to bring up another   
diagram. "Your Earth is in orbit around that sun of yours and stays where it is because of its   
pull."  
"Yeah," Dib prompted with a tight impatience, hearing nothing new.  
ZIM scowled at the human. "Well, through the amazing capacity of my goo-filled head, I   
realized that if I reversed the magnetism of the sun and-"  
"What?" Dib shoved himself closer to the panel. The girl squirmed away and shuffled   
toward ZIM. "Magnetism?" Dib gaped, glasses lit with the bizarre image on the screen.  
ZIM steered the child out of his personal space. Three were not intended to fit in a Voot   
Cruiser. He waved in dismissal. "Yes, Dib, the attraction between the magnetic core of your son   
and the metallic center of your Earth-"  
"What?" He leaned in towards the alien, face dark with disbelief. "What are you talking   
about?" His shuddering breath escaped between his teeth. The little Irken frowned with slight   
offense and worked herself over to the panel behind Dib, oblivious the tone of his voice rising   
hysterically. "What are you talking about?" His lips dragged down into a grim sneer, teeth   
borne like the peeling gums of something left dead in the heat. "The sun is not a magnet, ZIM!"  
"Foolish human-" ZIM began.  
"The sun is not a magnet!" The Irken rolled his eyes and patronizingly shook his head,   
but the human continued, "The Earth's orbit has nothing to do with magnets! How do you   
always manage to do stuff like this, ZIM? How do you make all these crazy things happen? It   
doesn't make sense! It doesn't make any sense at all!" He seized the alien by his pink collar.   
The little one slipped off the control panel in surprise. "There's no way you should have been   
able to do this, ZIM!" ZIM blinked, mouth agape, eyes fixed on the human face for a lack of   
anywhere else to place them. "How do you do things like this, ZIM?" The shocked alien   
squirmed slightly in his grip, completely at a loss. "How do you do things like this?" Dib could   
see the quiver in the creatures huge red eyes, the maddening pulse of existence itself. They   
shone with a polished gloss, worn smooth by the grit of a thousand more. There were thousands   
and there were billions and they were all the same, huge and round and red like blood. They all   
stared, stared at him and they were all the same. He could feel the starting singe of their   
collective gaze and he knew what it was they wanted from him and Dib raised a hooked hand to   
gouge one of them out.  
"Daddy?"  
  
"Daddy?"  
"Yes, Rikki?"  
"What are you doing?"  
"Nothing." He rolled the empty pill bottle under his palm, gliding it across the cool white   
tile and the blackened grout between the bathtub and the toilet.  
The little girl frowned but shrugged and flopped out a legal document size piece of paper   
crumpled with fingermarks. "I drew you a picture."  
Dib's eyelids hung over the man's eyes like metal shutters, sliding on a loose track. He   
spoke with an soft and empty reverence, voice barely fit to slip between his teeth and his lips.   
"Thank you, honey."  
The child held the out the paper with a loud and expectant flap, waiting for it to be taken   
from her hand, but her father's wrists lay with an unnatural limpness, dragging the icy tile, void   
of the intention of movement. She hopped in place to draw attention. "Don'cha wanna look?"  
Dib raised his head from the bathtub mechanically, face bright with the stick of its cold   
enamel. "Oh. Yes, Rikki, of course." He didn't feel the hand that drifted up to clip the paper   
between two fingers and he couldn't feel it fall into his lap but his head dropped down, lips   
pendulous with ragged breath. The floor swam as he gazed down, his own black legs stretched   
lengthwise and snapped back into place, and the blur of green and red scrawled on the lithe sheet   
sunk into a pool of disparity. "What is it?"  
The child held her lower lip between her teeth. "Look at it, Daddy!" She demanded.  
"I-" His hand stepped across the floor, dragged finger by finger, edging to the blight on   
his lap. "What-" The roughly carved streaks of green and red bled before him. "I-" With his   
next breath, they were wrenched into solid figures, flung sharply at his face with a cutting   
definition. There were three figures, a small boy with wide glasses, swathed in the fiercely   
scribbled black of a long draping trenchcoat, a little green alien, just his height, a pair of black   
antennae sprung from his head and eyes a solid and meticulously pressed crimson. There was a   
smaller alien, a child, garbed in a vibrant pink dress with wide pink eyes, the pungent shade of   
artificial raspberry. She held the hands of both the others, arranged in an uneven two-  
dimensional row upon the harshly looped scribbles of a grassy field beneath the crude circles of   
two huge orbs.  
The child tucked her head between her father and the drawing. "Do you see?"  
Dib rubbed a fist into the hazing gum of his eyes. He whispered hoarsely, "Do I see   
what?"  
Rikki flicked the man an earnest glance, the glint of a question in her eye. "Uhm," she   
started unsurely. "You know. It's us." A tiny finger flicked from the little girl with shining eyes   
to the man crumpled half unconscious on the bathroom floor to someone else in another   
direction, something that Dib couldn't see. "It's you."  
  
ZIM pressed the hard point of the Irken gun into the flesh stretched over the human skull.   
"You stupid, filthy creature!" He ground the metal piece against Dib's skull, leering over the boy   
with fervent disgust. "You know, Dib," he said, an edge slicing through his high strange voice,   
"there's a simple solution to all of this. There's always a simple solution." He snorted softly   
with what was short and quiet laughter. "I blow up your planet and I save mine. I blow your   
head off and I save myself a lot of trouble in the future." The alien smiled oddly, pleased with   
himself. "Ya wanna say something, Dib?"  
"I don't even think you're real, ZIM." Dib lay, unmoving, head against the floor, eyes   
upon the foreign workings of the alien vessel. He felt the gun bite into his temple.  
"What's that, Dib? Did you just say I'm not real?" The alien smiled ruefully, red eyes   
wide with a gleeful disbelief. He shook his head. "Well, that certainly is interesting, but do you   
really want that to be your final words? Don't you think you could up with something- oh, I   
dunno- a little less stupid?" He paused. "Nah." The Irken took an eager breath and grasped the   
trigger with a black gloved finger trembling in exultation.  
"Wait!"   
ZIM's concentration was broken by a light touch on his hand. The Irken child stood   
before them staring at ZIM plaintively, staring at Dib pleadingly. Her eyes glittered. ZIM's   
slender antennae twitched. "Well, what do you want?" he demanded, leaning into his weapon   
impatiently.  
"Are you really going to let this happen?"  
"What?"  
"Are you really just going to let it be this way?" She was talking to both of them, warm   
pink eyes, fixed on the two creatures sadly.  
Dib lifted lifted his head slightly, against the press of the gun, just enough to look up at   
the child. "Little girl," he said, voice clear but empty, "I don't think I even care anymore."  
"What is she talking about, Dib?"  
The human sighed thickly. "I've told you. You're not real, neither is she. As for me,"   
He blinked at the alien floor. "I guess that hasn't been decided yet."  
The little Irken child nestled beneath a console, craning over his head, peering into his   
eyes with her own, alive and lit. "But can't we decide? Everything can't be all bad. I don't   
think that everyone is bad. I think-" The child looked up to ZIM wistfully. "I think that we   
could all be okay. People- we don't have to fight because we're different. I don't know why   
people do the things they do, to each other, and do to themselves, but I think we could accept   
each other." There was a film of tears spread down her green face. "I don't think we have to   
fight. If we're different- well- then we just are. I don't think that any of us are bad, we just...   
don't get it. If you are what you are then..." Her voice broke off. "It's not supposed to be this   
way! It's not right. It's not-" She considered the word a moment. "good? Different people can   
live together." She was pleading. "We don't all have to be the same. We can all be us and   
maybe- maybe if we try then everything will be okay." The child watched them both, the human   
boy, uncaring, and the bright-eyed Irken with a gun to his head.  
Dib lay still for the full appreciation of the cool foreign metal pointed at his brain. The   
child's wide and earnest, deep and wishful bright pink eyes poised like a bird set on a branch, a   
frail thing, eminently intended to end in a moment. They were like the eyes of some urbane   
goddess, cast down upon the Earth to behold the grief wrought there, but whatever she may have   
wished for them, the creatures there who toiled their lives into oblivion, there was nothing she   
could do. As soon as she was divine, sooner she was touched by the taint of a breathing world,   
the fine layer of ether about her head stained with the fleeting violent crimson of reality. All   
who looked upon them were destined for the same. Her eyes were now pink because they would   
soon be red like everyone else's.  
"You poor doomed child."   
Finally at the end of his long-held patience, ZIM pulled the trigger.  
  
"So has he been doing after the treatment?"  
"Much better," the doctor said, "Our presumptions were correct it seems. The delusions   
have been clearing up and he doesn't seem to have suffered any physical damage."  
"How much does he remember?"  
"Only what we've let him." She fixed her thin wire glasses back on her nose. "That is,   
we've reprogrammed his memory from the time this 'ZIM' persona appeared onward." She   
glanced up at the man. "We've had some opportunity to experiment in the alteration of his   
perception in many ways. It's been fascinating. However, it all had need to be erased since this   
one is scheduled to be released back into society. It's really too bad, but we've others subjects to   
replace him. He won't remember having ever had this treatment. The story is, he's been abroad   
on some kind of a spiritual awakening. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but we will   
before we release him."  
The man nodded. "So he's fully functional now? Fully sane and ready to face society?"  
The woman pressed her lips. "Yes and no. We've managed to eliminate the deviant   
source in his personality, but there are still gaps left in his memory. I wouldn't worry," She   
tapped a pen to her clipboard. "Just try not to rile him up." She suddenly extended a hand to the   
man, taking his in a professional manner. "Thank you, Professor, for your time and your   
cooperation. This project could never have been so successful without you. I'm afraid I have   
business to attend to, but it's been a pleasure." She gestured toward the steel door, white painted   
and set with a tiny window stripped with black bars. "The attendants will show you in."  
The professor nodded again. "Thank you, Doctor Morado, and congratulations on your   
success." The doctor was already walking swiftly down the sterile white hall, but tossed back a   
hand in dismissing acknowledgement.  
The guards in the control room, punched a button, unbarring the doors with an   
exaggerated buzz. Within, the room was white and square, furnished sparsely in medical fixtures   
of stainless steel. An aging man stood over the operating table in the center of the room.   
"Professor Membrane," He nodded. "It's good to see you."  
"Doctor Akai." He nodded back. "So how is he doing?"  
The old doctor tapped a pen to his lips. "Well. Quite well." His deep, stagnant voice   
cracked slightly with the exertion to talk. "He should remember you. Do you want to talk to   
him?"  
There was a pause. "Yes." The doctor turned without further word and adjusted a knob   
on the IV stand. They both watched the body on the table intently as it stirred slowly into   
consciousness.   
Dib's eyes were sticky, unglueing tediously, splitting to reveal a wash of whiteness. It   
was a numb sort of cold where he lay.  
"Son?"  
Dib squirmed, jaw working open into what would have been a yawn but hung senselessly   
in a fish-like gape. "Mmm... Dad?" All perception ran damply around him into a single mass   
pool.  
"It's me, Son."  
"Oh." The young man's face tweaked slightly into what was somehow intended to be a   
smile. He could now make out the round of his father's dark goggles through the unifying haze   
upon which he drifted.  
"Are you feeling better, Son?"  
"Yeah." He tried to move his arms. "I guess. Thank you." His tongue felt disconnected   
from his mouth, gathering a pool of saliva. "Do they say I'm getting better?"  
"Yes, Son, they say you're much better." He patted the young man awkwardly on the   
shoulder. "They say you can come home soon."  
"Oh," he whispered hoarsely, "good."  
"And you won't have to worry about any of the disruptions in your head any more." He   
waited for Dib's reply but the young man was motionless, eyes glazing over slowly, jaw relaxing   
to let the gathered saliva spill. He shot a quick glance at Doctor Akai, who pointed to Dib's   
heart rate, still even.  
"He's only falling unconscious again. He'll be okay." He tinkered with the knobs again.   
"But we'd better just leave him. You should go home now." The professor nodded and waved   
to the guards behind the one-way mirror. The doors unbolted with a deep and brief percussion,   
throwing Dib awake at the jolt.  
"Dad?"  
The professor turned back to the young man strapped to the table. "Yes, Son?"  
"Can you tell me something?" His voice was dazed and almost awkward, as though he   
where shy to ask it.  
"What's that?"  
Dib needed a moment to figure that out for himself, laying silent, motionlessly extending   
a feeble grasp for the contents of his brain, and finding them plucked by the roots, one by one.   
He wanted to rub his eyes but he couldn't move his arms. He couldn't see for the brightness of   
their blur. "What color are my eyes?"  
His father frowned thoughtfully, casting a glance sidelong at the doctor. "Why do you   
wan to know, Son?"  
Dib squinted. "I-" He choked on a net of his own saliva. "I-" he continued in a bleak,   
hoarse voice, "I don't know." His fingers worked in the air, grasping at something that wasn't.   
"I just... Can you tell me?" The young man lay strapped in a square white room to a table cast   
in metal. From his pale soft flesh, tubes ran in and out, hooked to machines, frisking chemicals   
in, draining blood. There was a light above him, the muting white deadness of fabrication. Dib   
couldn't feel his own head. He wasn't sure if there was really something there. "What color are   
my eyes?"  
"Red."  
  
  
  
  
  
POSTSCRIPT  
  
Still confused? Yay, I am too. 0.0 But that's all there is. There isn't any more.  
  
I've started working on a thing I'm calling "Lavender" unless I happen to notice that title   
floating around here somewhere, which I might. It's completely and utterly unlike "Constancy".   
It's alot more clear, somewhat more low-key, and a little girly perhaps. A   
Drama/(maybe)Romance. That will be out... sometime. Thank you and goodbye! ^-^ 


End file.
